Lyte As a Rock: Happy Birthday MC Lyte

Lana Michelle Moorer aka MC Lyte is one of hip hop’s greatest MC’s of all time. I hate when people say “female rapper”, so I’m just gonna say “women in hip hop” instead. When it comes to women in hip hop, MC Lyte has definitely been the catalyst and inspiration to other women to come into the game and do it just as well and gain respect for it, especially when hip hop is mostly a male dominated field. MC Lyte along with Queen Latifah, Roxanne Shanté, Sha-Rock (from the group Funky Four Plus One More), Salt-N-Pepa, and Monie Love, just to name a few, are some of hip hop’s earlier women in the game and these ladies definitely held their own. MC Lyte was the first woman in hip hop to actually release a whole album, which was 1988’s “Lyte As a Rock.” After the success of her debut, Lyte kept coming with albums and more hits making her one of hip hop’s most respected woman in the game and a lot of people consider her their first choice when it comes to women in hip hop. Joints like “Cha Cha Cha”, “I Cram 2 Understand U (Sam)”, “Paper Thin”, “Poor Georgie”, “Ice Cream Dream” (from the Mo’ Money soundtrack), “Ruffneck”, “Keep On, Keepin’ On”, “Cold Rock a Party” and more. Lyte is the fly b-girl from Brooklyn with the attitude that caught your attention and kept your attention too. She was hard on the mic and her rhymes were just as tough as the guys on the mic, especially 1993’s “Ruffneck.” She went the hardest on the joint to me. She was describing the hard hood guy hanging on street corners, hustling with a bad attitude with the hardest voice you’ve ever heard Lyte spit. Lyte had bangers, she don’t have too many joints that was wack to me, almost all her shit was dope. She’ll always go down in history as the one of the realest, dead or alive.